Energy & Environment

Two important but solvable issues in Britain are the issues of food waste and food poverty. 

Recent research has found that 9.5 million tonnes of food was wasted in the UK in 2018. Most of the waste comes from households, with the rest from businesses, organisations, and other institutions. This waste was valued at over £19 billion pound a year, linked to over 25 million tonnes of emissions, and totalled 15 billion wasted meals.

The government has previously stated it wants to cut food waste in half by 2030, saying it was “morally wrong, environmentally damaging, and costs money”. Feedback, a campaign group targeting environmental damage in relation to food production, asked the government to scale “action up a level” by bringing in laws to regulate business, such as mandating businesses to donate their surplus food. They explained that whilst the UK had made “significantly greater progress than many countries”, there are limits on how much can be achieved through voluntary action.

Between 2019 and 2020, there were 5 million households known to be ‘food insecure’, meaning they would struggle to meet their food costs. Over the previous year, the Trussell Trust supplied people with over 2.5 million three-day emergency food parcels. Around 40% of these were supplied to children. Furthermore, as of January this year, there were more than 1.7 million children eligible for free school meals. The crisis of Covid-19 has made these issues even more pertinent, as people already in food poverty have begun to struggle further. This was highlighted by the campaigns of footballer Marcus Rashford and the subsequent government U-turn over free school meals.

A government run network, in partnership with the private sector, charities, and local communities could tackle the crisis: a Food Waste Network (FWN). Businesses, organisations, institutions, and households encouraged and supported to redistribute their surplus food. The aim would be allowing those who face food poverty to obtain food at the point of need within your local community, not unlike picking up medication from your pharmacy or booking an appointment at your GP.

Businesses, with particularly high food surplus, such as supermarkets and chain restaurants could be made by law to hold onto (in a hygienic environment) any leftover safe to eat food.  Connected organisations would arrive and pick up the food, to be taken and distributed at local FWN sites.

Institutions, organisations and households would be supported and encouraged to donate any food they were planning to throw out. There would be a public information campaign to explain how the service works followed by the implementation of clearly marked drop off points, at supermarkets, off-licenses, schools, places of worship, pharmacies, hospitals, GP surgeries, universities, and offices etc.

FWN would be set up to make sure the new laws are of as little inconvenience as possible to organisations and the public, with a focus on efficient delivery. Areas with a particularly high surplus of food would send food to FWN services in areas with particularly low food stock. 

A small independent body would be set up to regulate the service, making sure all food is safe and kept in hygienic conditions, allergens are clearly labelled or explained to members of the public and to hand out fines and sanctions where appropriate to address complaints. The setting up and running of the service would be paid for through government funding.

Britain should set an example by directly tackling the crises of food waste and hunger, through a specific Food Waste Network. Access to food should be seen as a human right and should be treated as such.

Tyler is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Adobe Stock]

Given the suffering and economic damage of the past year and a half, citizens across the world have every right to expect their governments to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic with meaningful plans to prevent future pandemics.

No doubt governments have learned many lessons on how to limit the spread of viruses, urgently procure medical equipment, and develop affordable vaccines. Recognising that international cooperation is key, a group of Presidents and Prime Ministers — including Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron — have called for a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response.

International efforts to plan for the next pandemic must not be stuck in a public health silo. As well as improving pandemic responsiveness plans for next time, we need to examine where novel viruses come from in the first place  — and act to stop them at source. To do this, pandemic prevention must be informed by the ecology of zoonotic disease emergence.

In truth, the call for a new treaty recognises this, describing the need for a ‘One Health’ approach that “connects the health of humans, animals, and our planet”.

While the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus outbreak is still unknown, close relatives to the virus have been found in bat populations in Southeast Asia. Zoonotic diseases first recorded in humans over the past 70 years include Zika fever, Ebola, AIDS, and Nipah virus infection. 

Ecologists believe potential hotspots for emerging infectious disease to be tropical forests with high mammal biodiversity undergoing land conversion. Conversion of natural habitats is thought to increase the likelihood susceptible humans and livestock will come into contact with infected wild hosts, with the process actually favouring host species such as bats and rodents. 

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the role intact natural habitats play in mitiga-ting the risk of novel virus emergence needs to be recognised internationally for what it is — a major global public good.

One of the main messages of the recent government-commissioned Dasgupta Review into the Economics of Biodiversity is that natural ecosystems underpin human welfare in a variety of ways. But the economic system, left to its own devices, will underinvest in these assets because they provide public goods. Markets are very good at delivering goods and services which benefit individuals with the desire and means to pay for them. They are extremely bad at navigating trade-offs between the provision of private and public goods. People don’t tend to voluntarily forgo income and consumption which immediately benefits them for small changes in diffuse public goods. 

That is why governments need to step in to protect public goods. International institutions and treaties, however, have so far failed to adequately protect biodiversity over the past decade. A criticism of previous international biodiversity targets has been that they stimulated the creation of protected areas on paper, but failed to ensure that these protected areas are effectively managed or resourced, or created in areas of high conservation value. 

The easiest way to meet an area-based target is to protect areas with low opportunity cost, that is, little in the way of alternative economic uses. But the areas most at risk of zoonotic spillover are those undergoing land conversion — areas with high opportunity cost. A nature conservation strategy aiming to reduce zoonotic spillover risk would need to bite this bullet.

Such a strategy would require concerted international political commitment and effort to fill the implementation gap being left by international treaties and targets. It would need financial resources, willingness, and goodwill from tropical forest nations, penalties for companies profiting from uncontrolled deforestation, and transparent, fair, and financially stable mechanisms for ensuring poor people living close to forests have alternative, sustainable livelihoods. It would also mean policy being made on the basis of scientific evidence which is complex and evolving, on the understanding that research needs to be supported in tandem with policy.

According to one estimate, the annual cost of achieving a 40% reduction in an area at high risk of virus spillover would be $2-10 billion. This is not a trivial amount. But it is small compared to the $5.6 trillion in lost GDP from Covid-19, not to mention the millions of deaths, the 110+ million people pushed into extreme poverty and/or food insecurity, and the larger global social costs of longer-term disease and lockdowns.

Tropical deforestation is not a politically easy problem to solve, as those working on existing efforts to tackle it know far too well. But if we are here in ten years’ time amidst the fallout of another pandemic caused by a virus which once confined itself to bats or monkeys — having failed to read the signs — we will be looking at not just another lost decade for conservation, but one of the great public policy failures of our time.

Helen Jackson is an environment and natural resource economist and an Associate Fellow of Bright Blue. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine Target secured?. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona]

The UK Government has set a target to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels, on its journey to net zero 2050. Achieving such deep reductions in carbon emissions will require behavioural changes from individuals. However, the onus should not be placed solely on the time-limited and sometimes captive consumer who has little knowledge of the production processes of goods and services. Businesses also have a moral duty to “greenify” their production processes.

Whilst the tug of war between corporate and individual responsibility needs to be corrected, individuals will still have a large role to play in mitigating climate change. Therefore, it is essential that individuals know which behavioural changes they should be striving towards. These “climate actions” must be empirically based, clear and practical solutions.

I fear that well-meaning, but misinformed, beliefs about effective climate action will remain in the public’s consciousness for a long time. In part, these misinformed beliefs are driven by the fact that our climate and conservation goals are not always aligned. 

Take the case of the simple plastic bag. For any target we must consider the production, use and disposal of the product. The production process of a single-use plastic bag has the lowest carbon emissions of any bag; however it does not biodegrade and will eventually break down to join the millions of tonnes of microplastic in our ocean. On the other hand, a cotton bag must be used thousands of times to justify its carbon-intensive production process. Cotton also uses more herbicide than any other crop, which pollutes local waterways – but it is biodegradable. Something as simple as a shopping bag has many complex factors in determining its green credentials depending on which environmental outcome you focus on – carbon emissions; land, sea or waterway pollution; deforestation; and biodiversity loss, to name a few.

The humble plastic bag is no anomaly. Similar emissions versus pollution cost arguments can be made with bottles (glass or plastic), cars (electric or fossil fuel) or food (local or imported). As long as one environmental priority comes at the cost of another, I see no clear solution to this problem until a precedent is set for which targets we should prioritise. This should then be communicated in a coordinated and consistent way.

Putting these conflicting priorities aside for now and focussing on reducing carbon emissions, there still remains misinformation within specific aims and priorities. The graph below highlights the discrepancy between which actions individuals believe are the most effective at reducing carbon emissions, and which actions actually are the most effective. Could an information campaign be the answer?

Source: FT

Unfortunately, misinformation is incredibly difficult to correct. Some have tried to combat this with “Mythbusters”. These try to differentiate fact from fiction (see an example from the NHS below). However often the myths are recalled as facts and the corrections remain forgotten. To make matters worse, familiarity can be confused with recall (remembering a fact from memory). Thus misinformation should be removed as quickly as possible. Even mythbusters that focus only on affirming facts can be forgotten after a week. Furthermore, successful corrections can create generalised feelings of distrust, known as a “tainted truth” effect. When correcting misinformation it should also be succinct. Otherwise it runs the risk of backfire effects. These occur when misinformation appears simpler and easier to believe than the truth. Given all these complexities, correcting information or beliefs once they’re circulating is a herculean task. Preventative action is needed sooner than ever.

Source: NHS Liverpool CCG

If misinformation spreads so easily and is so stubborn to remove, prevention must be far better than cure. Information campaigns should focus on having less children, consuming less animal-based products, not owning a car and flying less. This is unlikely to be popular with the public, but we can take two approaches to increase behavioural change: implicit behavioural “nudges” or explicit information. Behavioural “nudges” are planned changes in the environment that cause systematic shifts in people’s behaviour. If you’ve walked into a supermarket today, received a reminder in the post or been offered a pastry with your morning coffee, you’ve experienced a nudge. These can easily be shifted to be more environmentally friendly, such as using email instead of postal reminders.

At an explicit level, we must appeal to both reason and emotion. Triggering someone’s emotions creates a connection and people are more likely to engage with the issue. For example, storytelling about individuals is far more effective than statistics at creating public engagement. Once they are engaged, you can use statistics or other evidence to show an overall pattern.  This avoids the problem of the “faceless statistic” which disengages people. David Attenborough’s wildly popular documentaries provide an excellent example – often following both the struggle of a family, and their greater decline as a species.

We must define which targets we want to prioritise, identify which actions are the most efficient way to reach them and start a public education campaign. These actions have to be concrete, practical, and memorable (and the message repeated several times) if the campaign is to be effective. Correcting misinformation is extremely difficult as the corrections don’t spread as quickly as the original misinformation. Instead we should focus on prevention, making clear that these climate actions are backed by scientists and the government. 

These campaigns must be formalised for teachers and included in the national curriculum. Fortunately there already exists a wide range of resources on how to do this. A dissemination plan for older audiences should be organised. This must include the risks of failure to act, climate actions and where to find further support. Media outlets, social media companies and large corporations could provide appropriate channels to disperse this information on a regular basis. 

I believe we’re at the beginning of a huge cultural shift towards recognising the different environmental concerns and their own nuances. We must start this public information campaign before the momentum really takes off. The public and political will for climate and conservation action is slowly gaining traction… let’s nudge it in the right direction.

Jesse is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: veeterzy]

Youth climate protests have garnered a lot of attention since 2018, with thousands of young people taking to the streets to demand greater action in the fight against climate change. Alongside demands for a more sustainable economic system is a strong desire for wider and improved climate education in schools.

The energy and passion of students involved in these protests should be harnessed in the fight against climate change, not ignored. By educating future generations, we can inspire them to enact positive change and ensure they arrest the continued deterioration of our environment.

Polling from Students Organising Sustainably reveals that 68% of UK students want to learn more about the environment in school, with 85% agreeing that all schools and colleges should be encouraging and helping students to make environmentally conscious decisions. Such figures clearly demonstrate the desire of young people to be informed and engaged in the fight for and defence of the planet.

Currently, the science behind climate change forms part of the GCSE curriculum in geography and science. However, students are not taught about the economic and social impacts of the crisis. As such, while they may be aware of the causes of soaring methane levels, even economics A-level students are likely to be uninformed about how the climate resilience of different countries will influence their annual GDP in the coming decades.

Carbon pricing will play a key role in future economic development, which can help all sectors adapt to necessary regulations and fuel green growth. Students need to learn about what the future of work will look like in this environment, including new job opportunities and their salaries. If they are to play a role in a sustainable economy, they must be adequately taught and trained for the shift from carbon-intensive jobs to green ones.

Vocational training also offers a unique opportunity to equip apprentices with future-proof skills. Jenny Thatcher, campaigner at Friends of the Earth, calls for plumbing courses to teach how to install low-carbon heating systems and catering colleges to cover sustainable diets. Such forward-thinking approaches highlight the wide-ranging impacts of climate change for the whole workforce, not just for jobs in renewable energy. Furthermore, new guidance on education for sustainable development in higher education is a welcome step towards the inclusion of links between climate and socioeconomic issues across all parts of education.

In an opinion piece, Jackie Rogers and Caroline Sudworth reviewed the opportunities for combining study with on-the-job experience in the environmental sector. The point that proposals like these are missing, however, is that a key priority is to prevent the environment becoming a specialised interest for a select group of students. Rather, the impact of humans on the natural world needs to be understood across the board.

As Dr d’Reen Struthers, lecturer at the Institute of Education at UCL puts it, “We don’t just want future ecologists to understand sustainability. We want bankers, builders and everyone else to consider it in everything they do.” Ultimately, we need to reach a point where climate change becomes an everyday discussion point in classrooms and beyond.

In fact, the earlier, the better: UNESCO’s programme of Education for Sustainable Development notes that primary and post-primary schools are ideal environments for developing sustainable behaviours in children. Exposure to concepts like the impact of individuals on the planet and carbon footprints from an early age will ingrain environmental consciousness in many children, as well as providing a basis for further engagement.

One such example is provided by Scientists for Global Responsibility, a UK-based organisation, who run ‘One Planet – One Life’ workshops in primary schools with a focus on learning through playing. Through interactive activities and data presented in memorable forms, they were able to foster engagement amongst schoolchildren and encourage them to consider behavioural choices.

It is similarly important for school students to put their knowledge into practice. Over 20,000 schools in England have already registered with Eco-Schools, whose ‘seven step framework’ allows students to take an active role in improving their school’s impact on the environment, for instance through whole-school recycling or gardening projects.

This very much fits in with the goals of organisations who want to practise what they preach. Teach the Future, who have been vocal in climate strikes and even drafted a ‘climate emergency education bill’ in 2020, have called for all educational buildings to be carbon-neutral by 2030. 

Some people may view the broadening of climate education as a form of indoctrination; this would assume that the science behind climate change is equivalent to opinion, or even an agenda. I would argue it is our duty to arm children with the knowledge they need to slow our hurtling progress towards an environmental catastrophe.

Reform to the current school curriculum will equip students with the knowledge and experience to fight the climate crisis. By filling jobs that are vital for combating it and feeling empowered to hold governments and corporations to account, young people will be able to shape the future.

Tim is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. 

Leading up to the Venice summit, the G20’s record on climate already looked less than ideal.

Since 2015, the G20 countries have collectively spent $3 trillion on fossil fuel subsidies, and several key members, including major polluters India and Saudi Arabia, have not yet committed to reaching net zero by 2050.

Ahead of the summit, environment ministers from developing countries called for stronger action on climate finance. Yet the pledge to provide $100 billion in climate finance, essential for helping developing nations to reach their climate goals, remains unmet.

Despite making progress on issues such as a global corporate tax rate, the G20 showed little ambition to take on climate problems, with implications for outcomes at the COP26 Conference this November. 

While the G20 Finance Ministers’ communiqué reiterated key commitments to providing climate finance, it ultimately failed to deliver substantive, concrete proposals. Instead, it promised to “encourage” green investment and “promote” the implementation of climate risk disclosure practices.

However, the G20 communiqué did for the first time mention carbon pricing as a potential policy tool. Carbon pricing systems are financial tools which transfer the cost of releasing greenhouse gas emissions to producers, incentivising investment in more sustainable practices.

The most common version of this is ‘cap-and-trade’. Inspired by the 1990 US Clean Air Act against acid rain, this sets a ceiling on emissions that businesses can emit, and provides for a fixed number of emissions allowances, which companies purchase and then trade amongst each other. 

Any emissions over the limit are charged, encouraging companies to reduce emissions in the most economical way. The most prominent example of this is the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which has contributed to a 35% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 35% since 2005.

Another carbon pricing system, the carbon tax, simply taxes all greenhouse gas emissions at a set rate and in some cases invests the funds in green infrastructure. This first emerged in Scandinavian countries in the early 1990s, such as Finland and Sweden, which has cut its emissions by 25% since 1991, whilst its economy grew 60%.

Hence why French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that ministers were “pushing very hard” to include carbon pricing in the communiqué. However, the G20 should have built on the more ambitious proposals being developed elsewhere to meet Paris Agreement targets.

Only days after the summit, the European Commission unveiled a sweeping new climate plan that included a powerful new carbon pricing tool: the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM). This places an emissions-based tariff on imports, designed to prevent businesses moving production abroad to avoid regulation (called “carbon leakage”). This could provide a significant financial incentive for overseas producers to adopt more sustainable practices. 

Such tariffs also protect domestic industries from less regulated, more environmentally harmful competition overseas. If passed, the CBAM proposal could be a decisive step toward meeting net zero targets, provided it can overcome opposition from countries such as Australia, and comply with WTO trade regulations.

In the US, the Biden Administration is backing a similar proposal as part of a proposed $3.5tn budget package. Senate Democrats are hoping a carbon tariff can pressure China and other heavy polluters to cut emissions. This will likely draw support from key US financial institutions, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen favouring the carbon taxes to drive sustainable reforms among businesses.

So, where does the UK stand on the CBAM proposals? While the Government briefly considered adopting a carbon tax after Brexit, officials instead opted for a revised version of the EU’s ETS scheme. And in response to a memo leaked to the press in February this year, No. 10 flatly denied that a CBAM is being considered. 

Yet such measures are increasingly popular, with a recent poll suggesting two-thirds of UK voters favour a carbon tax.

As the COP President, it is vital the UK shows climate leadership ahead of the summit in Glasgow in November. Already, over 100 developing countries have demanded much more significant emissions cuts and financial assistance from wealthy nations ahead of COP26, and recent foreign aid cuts further exacerbate this.

Whilst there are various ways to reach net zero, the Government should commit to more ambitious action to combat climate change, such as a carbon tax or tariff. If the UK is to set itself apart as a climate leader, then it needs to keep up.

John is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Billy Wilson]

During late May 2021, the GB Non-native Species Secretariat and partners are organising ‘Invasive Species Week 2021’. Non-native species are often called invasive alien species – for simplicity we use aliens in this blog. So, this is a good time to reflect on what invasive species are and where they ‘fit’ ecologically and in terms of nature conservation. A crucial question is also how we, the most invasive species globally, cohabit with the rest of biodiversity. Clearly invasive species, typically non-native, can be very bad news indeed. Simply put, in economic terms the impacts are colossal, and furthermore, the costs are rising rapidly. Nevertheless, the situation is not so straightforward or simple as appears at first. Many assume ‘problem’ species are all invasive non-natives, yet this is often not the case. 

Native plants like bracken for example, come close to the top of any list of problem plants in Britain. Indeed, history and science frequently get rather muddled as to what is native. As a ‘nation of gardeners’ we love exotic flowers and, helped by urbanisation, globalisation, and climate change, many of these cultivated plants are leaping the garden fence. We do enjoy gardening with potentially invasive species, but throughout history gardeners and landscapers actively release them into the wild. This is a strong reason for having awareness-raising events like Invasive Species Week. 

However, our aspirations for achieving some control must be tempered with a touch of reality. Not only is the evidence against us making significant impacts on all but a handful of invasive species, but history is against us too. During the Ice Ages our islands have been colonised and recolonised by biodiversity for 25,000 years or more. More recently, human settlers have actively and passively introduced species for around 3,000 years. However, the pace is hotting up and our ecology is now a hybrid mix, novel and thoroughly ‘recombinant’.

Economic costs from non-native invaders are very high, although how this is calculated does affect how this is presented. Furthermore, economic impacts of non-native species must be considered from both positive and negative viewpoints. In this context, horticulture and gardening, garden tourism, economic forestry, and most of all agriculture all rely heavily on exotic species and cultivars worth billions of pounds to the UK economy. Additionally, in some areas economically significant plants such as Sitka spruce are also major invasive problems.

With invasive animals there are big questions regarding time of arrival, how it arrived, is it native, non-native or honorary native, and why is it a problem. If a species, either native or exotic, is deemed problematic, is there anything we can do to minimise or eradicate it? Following from this question is whether necessary actions are possible and acceptable or desirable, and critically, are we prepared to pay? We know, for example, that grey squirrels are non-native, destroy the eggs and young of native birds, and have economic impacts on forestry. However, would the British public, landowners, foresters, and conservation bodies really be prepared to take effective action to either control or to eradicate the species? Also, would it really be possible? The answer to both questions is probably ‘no’. 

The signal crayfish is an invasive alien problem species from North America deliberately introduced to Britain causing the almost certain extinction of the native crayfish. However, across swathes of the English Midlands for example, this highly damaging invasion has taken place with virtually no attempt to stop or even slow the process. There have been high profile efforts such as the eradication of coypu and muskrat in the mid-twentieth century, and then more recently to near removal of ruddy duck, but these aside, success has been limited. Furthermore, the actions proved contentious and controversial hindering complete success and leaving long-term implications. 

These examples suggest that we need to reconsider how best to live with invasive non-native species minimising adverse impacts while recognising our complex nature-cultural interactions. Invasions of both native and non-native species are mostly caused and exacerbated by human impacts on the environment – typically poor land-use choices. These include removal of native species, creation of invasion opportunities, , chronic stressing of ecosystems, and the globalising of species distributions. To address long-term problem species we must accept that our current ecosystems result from eco-fusion processes over many centuries. 

We need to decide what mix of ecology we want in the long-term and why, whether this is possible, and how can it be achieved realistically and economically. We should focus on ‘problem’ species rather than ‘aliens’. We must also accept that the decisions we make are subjective assessments of what, where, why, and when there is a problem! Science can provide objective assessments even though the ecological history is frequently wrong, but the ultimate decisions are choices people must make. Whatever we decide, history is not reversible. Our future ecology will be a fusion of long-term natives, honorary natives, and aliens. Adverse impacts can be minimised only by fundamental changes in the way that people interact with nature; the rest is tinkering around the edges.

Ian D. Rotherham and Peter Bridgewater are at the Advanced Wellness Research Centre, part of Sheffield Hallam University. Views expressed in this article are those of the authors, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. 

Following the declaration of a climate emergency on the 1st May 2019, the UK Government has been ambitious in its efforts to combat climate change and deliver deep decarbonisation. For instance, in 2019 the UK Government amended the 2008 Climate Change Act to enshrine a target of net zero emissions by 2050 in law, and is on track to outperform its third carbon budget, which runs from 2018-22. However, a large disruption to the UK’s decarbonisation agenda exists in the form of Scottish separation.

A separated Scotland would mean the end of a streamlined green industrial strategy; a Scotland lacking a relationship with the rest of the UK that delivers on the more costly aspects of decarbonisation; and a diminished voice for both Holyrood and Westminster on climate-related issues, no longer being able to act as a Union on the global stage.

The nature of the green industrial strategy in the UK is very much integrated across Scotland and the rest of the UK, and streamlined to maximise speed, output and profit. Scotland’s resources for generating renewable electricity are some of the highest in Europe, with renewables producing 97.4% of Scotland’s electricity in 2020, in part due to a majority of the UK’s wind capacity being located in Scottish waters. 

Should Scottish separation occur, it would cause a complete overhaul of this streamlined strategy. Scotland, dependent on UK support in the development of its renewables, would be unable to maintain the innovation it has achieved in the field of renewable energy, with complex Anglo-Scottish Corporations, such as the public Crown Estate Scotland, and the private SSE, controlling much of the future development of Scottish renewable energy.

The close relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK in its green energy strategy would mean that, if the possibility of separation is achieved, the development of renewable energy resources on the British isles may not be fully realised. Although Scottish separation would allow for full Scottish control over these resources, the development of these resources would progress at a substantially slower rate than if there was continued unionism. This would hinder Scotland’s ability to tackle the climate crisis. 

Separation would also result in Scotland being bore with the expensive brunt of decarbonisation. North Sea oil, once a major pillar of the Scottish economy, is now planned to be phased out of use by 2040. An economic report by Oil and Gas UK projected the current decommissioning costs of oil rigs in the UK waters in the North Sea would reach £19 billion by 2040. Furthermore, operators of oil fields leased before 1993 would be able to claim a rebate of up to 75% of the decommissioning cost from their past payments of petroleum revenue tax. 

Put simply, a newly formed, economically isolated Scotland would be left alone to pay significant amounts of money if it were to continue to follow its own goals to combat climate change. Most likely, the goal of phasing out oil completely would not be achieved by 2040, as a result of several factors. A 10 year wait for EU membership would prevent access to the EU’s financial support for renewable energy projects. And access to UK Government funding would also restrict Scotland’s financial capacity to deliver more costly elements of decarbonisation.

Finally, an separate Scotland would lack the major global presence it currently has as part of the Union, with the UK being a key member in intergovernmental organisations, such as the G7 and a permanent member of the UN security council. This gives the UK significant influence to create incremental changes in response to the climate crisis, with the G7 announcing last week the doubling of funding to countries in the Global South to help deliver deep decarbonisation. A Scotland which remains part of the union would have greater clout in influencing international climate policy.

Scotland’s present day national policies in response to the climate crisis are worthy of their universal renown, but significant change can only be delivered through continued cooperation. By maintaining the Union, the interdependent system of renewable energy development will be maintained, and Scotland’s presence on the global stage vis-a-vis climate change will be preserved.

Luke is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Raphael Hofmann]